In the nearly three weeks since the April 2 Liberation Day announcement, countless strategists have taken turns to declare the end of US exceptionalism, with many going so far as to declare the looming end of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency as the US faces a period of economic slowdown. Yet one thing that commentators seem to gloss over is that a US economic slowdown will reverberate across the world, hitting most developed nations just as hard, while crushing export-oriented emerging markets, something we first noted minutes after Trump's fateful announcement on April 2.
So which EMs are most exposed to the escalating trade war?
For the answer we go to the latest EM Macro Navigator report from Goldman Sachs (available to pro subscribers), in which the bank discusses the outlook for emerging market (EM) economies and the forecast changes it has made in response to tariff increases; the report's aim is to provide a framework to explore the various vulnerabilities to tariff increases, together with a discussion of the implications of the changes made to date.
